Orbit-related sea level errors for TOPEX altimetry at seasonal to decadal timescales

Esselborn, Saskia; Rudenko, Sergei; Schöne, Tilo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-205-2018

Articles | Volume 14, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-205-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-205-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 2

Research article

|

15 Mar 2018

Research article |

| 15 Mar 2018

Orbit-related sea level errors for TOPEX altimetry at seasonal to decadal timescales

Saskia Esselborn, Sergei Rudenko, and Tilo Schöne

Data sets

GFZ VER11 SLCCI precise orbits of altimetry satellites ERS-1, ERS-2, Envisat, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 and Jason-2 in the ITRF2008 S. Rudenko, T. Schöne, K.-H. Neumayer, S. Esselborn, J.-C. Raimondo, and D. Dettmering https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.1.2.2018.001

Short summary

Global and regional sea level changes are the subject of public and scientific concern. Sea level data from satellite radar altimetry rely on precise knowledge of the orbits. We assess the orbit-related uncertainty of sea level on seasonal to decadal timescales for the 1990s from a set of TOPEX/Poseidon orbit solutions. Orbit errors may hinder the estimation of global mean sea level rise acceleration. The uncertainty of sea level trends due to orbit errors reaches regionally up to 1.2 mm yr⁻¹.